Found this interesting...
http://www.abqjournal.com/elex/248166elex10-24-04.htm [emphasis mine]
Sunday, October 24, 2004
A Look at the Issues: Hispanic Vote Key in Race
During the 1960s, they were stigmatized as "The Sleeping Giant"— a fast-growing demographic that could possess political power if they would stop snoozing and start participating.
Today, political experts are calling Hispanics the "New Margin of Victory"— a giant so wide awake in the 2004 U.S. presidential election that the Republican and Democratic parties have never tried harder to court it.
Wooing the Hispanic vote has become essential for the parties this time around, area political experts say, because the nation's Latino population of 35 million is the fastest growing demographic and now makes up the country's third largest ethnic/racial voting block with 7 to 8 million voters.
In New Mexico, Hispanics make up the state's second largest racial/ethnic voting block, said Antonio González, San Antonio, Texas-based president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, one of the nation's oldest Latino voter registration organizations.
The Hispanic giant has also been chased by political action groups like SVREP, which have brought in record numbers of registered voters hoping to increase Latino political clout.
"Hispanics are playing such a high role in this year's election because of a whole mix of things," said Armando Gutierrez, an Albuquerque-based political media consultant who specializes in crafting messages that appeal to Hispanics. "There's the 2000 Census, which has made us aware that Hispanics have surpassed African-Americans for the first time as the new majority minority.
"There's the fact that the 2000 presidential election was so close, and we now know every vote counts," said Gutierrez, noting that Bush lost New Mexico to Gore in 2000 by a mere 366 votes. "And there's the fact that there are high concentrations of Hispanics in key battleground states like New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Florida and Arizona."
And states win elections, said Christine Sierra, an associate professor of political science at the University of New Mexico.
"In the closeness of this race, both parties know winning states with high Hispanic electorates could easily tip the race in their favor," she said. "For example, Cubans tend to vote Republican. In a battleground state like Florida, that could be essential for a Bush victory."
About two-thirds of New Mexico's Hispanic voters have supported the Democratic party candidate in past presidential elections, Sierra said. Nationally, the number has been reported to be as high as seven out of 10.
Key states, new voters
There's no question about it, presidential candidates are giving Hispanics more attention, whether in the form of frequent visits to key states or through the purchase of Spanish language ads.
However, Sierra said rather than being a nationwide phenomenon, the spotlight is only on battleground states.
"This somewhat disheartens me because attention isn't being given to Hispanics throughout the United States," said Sierra, who teaches a class on Hispanics in politics. "And that tells me it's all about winning margins, not about taking the message to mobilize Hispanics across the country."
Gutierrez said the emphasis on Hispanics this year seems magnified compared to the 2000 election because both camps have had time to assess the census data.
"The Census of 2000 confirmed what people had been saying all along," said Gutierrez, who worked on the 1996 Clinton-Gore and 2000 Gore-Liberman Hispanic media campaigns. "That there was going to be, and there was, explosive growth among Hispanic populations. And not only was there expansion, there was expansion in non-traditional places.
"Both parties also now realize how close the 2000 election was and how they can now do better in 2004," Gutierrez said. "It's all been building up over the years."
Gov. Bill Richardson says Hispanic voters will turn out in record numbers.
"My view has always been that the high Hispanic populations in Florida, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado— and in Arizona but not so much anymore as other states— would help determine the outcome of this close race," said Richardson, who launched Moving America Forward, a political action committee that aims to get more than 1 million Latino and Native American voters to the polls nationwide.
"What should help is that in these battleground states, there are high numbers of newly registered Latino voters," he said. "My organization alone has registered 156,000 Latinos in these five battleground states. Now we just need to make sure they turn up to vote."
Record numbers
Moving America Forward isn't the only political action group that has worked overtime trying to get the Hispanic electorate registered and ready for the November election.
Matthew Henderson, head organizer in New Mexico for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a national community organization of low- and moderate-income families, said his group registered 35,259 voters of whom at least two-thirds are Hispanic.
"Hispanics and new citizens were definitely of the constituencies we went after," Henderson said.
SVREP registered close to 18,000 Latinos in New Mexico alone, bringing its nationwide total this year to about 100,000 new Latino voters.
"That's five times more than we registered in New Mexico in 2000," González said. "Latinos are the only major ethnic group growing at a rapid pace and have been for the last 20 years.
"Whites are a declining demographic, and the black population has slowed down— that's just the reality of it," he said. "So, I think people are going to be very surprised just how big Latino turnout is going to be. It's going to be record blasting."
Southwest Voter has even gone so far as to offer a drawing for free cars to people who can prove they took five friends or family members to vote.
Courting the giant
Just as important as whether Hispanics will make it to the polls, experts say, is for whom the majority of them will vote.
In a state like New Mexico, which has a 42 percent Hispanic population— the highest proportion of any state in the country— Gutierrez said candidates need to know how to court that vote. So far, he doesn't think either camp has reached Hispanics as well as they could.
Efforts to acknowledge ethnicity by sprinkling speeches with Spanish phrases or by trotting out campaign slogans like "Viva Bush!" and "Unidos Con Kerry," just scratch the surface, Gutierrez said.
Spanish is important, Gutierrez said, but there should be a lot more English media targeted at Hispanics— especially in a state like New Mexico where the majority of Hispanics are native born.
Adam J. Segal, director of the Hispanic Voter Project at Johns Hopkins University, has tracked the growing amount of spending by Democrats and Republicans on Spanish-language television advertising.
He says it's gone from the $3 million spent during the 2000 presidential race to at least $4 million already spent so far in this year's race.
"All indications point to record spending on Spanish ads in this year's presidential contest," Segal said.
Kerry's New Mexico campaign spokesman Ruben Pulido and Bush 2004 Southwest regional spokesman Danny Diaz said their camps have respectively attempted to reach Hispanic voters with an array of strategies.
"We're on TV, we're on the radio, we're going door to door making visits to Hispanic neighborhoods," Pulido said. "Before, Spanish ads were just experimental. Now, they're just part of the plan."
The issues
Gutierrez said aside from ignoring first-time voters and new registrants, both parties are overusing immigration as an issue in courting Hispanics.
"Immigration is important to Hispanics, but it isn't a top foreign issue for the majority of them," he said. "It does matter as a civil rights issue, but Hispanics have other issues of concern just like everybody else."
Pulido agrees.
"If anything, all issues are really Hispanic issues because they resonate with other voters," he said. "But candidates do need to acknowledge that Hispanics are disproportionately and negatively affected by many of the issues they are concerned about."
Like much of the general voting population, Hispanics have identified the war in Iraq and homeland security as top foreign issues.
Also in line with the general voting block, Hispanics have said health care, education and better job opportunities are their top domestic issues.
And typecasting Hispanics as Democrat and Catholic isn't the way to go, Sierra said.
"We've become a diverse population," she said. "Our political organizations, our mobilizing efforts, our strategies all have become more sophisticated and diverse.
"We've also increased the number of Hispanics we have in political office under both parties by far," she said. "And we're gaining visibility having more of them hold state offices, which means that should eventually lead to more of them running at the national level."
Sierra says there is evidence that Hispanics are becoming more socially conservative.
Diaz agrees.
"For the most part, it's been shown that Hispanics in New Mexico have socially conservative voting records," he said.
"Gay marriage and abortion do not typically agree with their beliefs," he said. "This is not an assumption, there's data all over that shows that. And you can't win votes unless you're in line with their socially conservative views."I've been saying this for months! It's good to get confirmation.
